Tragic tale of aging, isolation emerges a year after mom, daughter's remains found

Missing mom, daughter mystery

George Skene, Orlando Sentinel

Phyllis Jackson, 87, and her daughter, Patty Novak, were reclusive in the last year of their lives. Nobody had seen them for more than six months. A lawn-care worker smelled something odd and called the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. A deputy found the skeletons of the women inside the house...

Phyllis Jackson, 87, and her daughter, Patty Novak, were reclusive in the last year of their lives. Nobody had seen them for more than six months. A lawn-care worker smelled something odd and called the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. A deputy found the skeletons of the women inside the house... (George Skene, Orlando Sentinel)

LONGWOOD — For more than six months, nobody saw Patty Novak or her 87-year-old mother, Phyllis Jackson.

They withdrew from relatives. They had no close friends. They guarded their privacy.

Nearly a year ago, David DeLoach, who had cared for the family's lawn for two decades, noticed an odd smell when he rang their doorbell. He and a neighbor walked behind the home on Tollgate Trail and saw flies in the windows. They called the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.

A deputy broke in and found Jackson's skeleton lying face up, unclothed, in a hallway. In the master bedroom was Novak's skeleton, wearing a floral-print shirt and a brown skirt. There was no sign of foul play.

Relatives, friends and neighbors were aghast.

"I just cried," said Franlis Romano, 27, who lives across the street. "It was a weird feeling. I never expected that they were going to end like this."

The story of Novak and Jackson is one of isolation — the kind that can accompany advancing age, especially in Florida where so many older people relocate and leave behind close relationships.

But interviews and investigative reports released last month shine a light on something more complicated: the pain of loss, the challenge of caring for the elderly and the wills and quirks of two fiercely private women.

"There was a part of me that, when they found the bodies, I was not surprised," Novak's first cousin Mary Beth Newcomb said. "It was like, yeah, I just thought Patty had signed out, given up, made that choice. I think she just sort of lost interest in everything."

Helen Patrice "Patty" Novak was born in 1950 and spent her youth traveling the world with her mother and father, who was in the CIA, Newcomb, 62, said. It was hard for Novak to form relationships because they moved often — Tehran, Okinawa and the Philippines were among their destinations — and she had to keep her dad's job a secret. She had no siblings.

"I didn't see any point in making friends or getting close to anybody because I knew we were going to have to leave them," Novak once told Newcomb.

Novak left college to get married. She and her husband lived on a farm in rural Maryland, then moved to Virginia, where she worked at the post office and he made furniture. They had no children.

After their divorce, Novak moved to her mother's hometown in West Virginia. Meanwhile, Jackson lived near Longwood with her husband, Henry, in the house in the well-kept suburban neighborhood, The Woodlands, where mother and daughter eventually died.

The happiest time in Novak's life was when she remarried, Newcomb said. Matt Novak was a history teacher in Oakland, Md., population 1,925, where Newcomb also lives. The couple raised a few beef cattle on a 60-acre farm and had a huge garden with flowers and vegetables.

"That was finally a time in her life that she had somebody in her life that was there day in and day out and belonged to her," Newcomb said.

Then Matt Novak needed a kidney transplant. His immune system compromised, he caught the flu and died in 2002 at age 53. Patty Novak started spending more time with her mother.

Caregiver's stress

Jackson was widowed in 2004. Afterward, her health declined.

She fell while line dancing and broke her hip. She got breast cancer. She fell again and broke her other hip. She also had Alzheimer's disease when she died, autopsy records show.

Novak took care of her mom but felt increasingly overwhelmed and depressed, Newcomb said. She went to several doctors in Maryland and Florida and even to an emergency room in search of help.

"Nobody put any of it together," Newcomb said. "All they saw was, here comes this person who seems really OK, but they didn't have the whole history. Once you talked to her, you could see that something wasn't right."

Taking care of a person with dementia is immensely stressful, said Monika Ardelt, a sociology professor at the University of Florida. It's even tougher without help.

"In some ways, it's a consequence of an individualistic society," said Ardelt, who studies aging. "All our lives we want to do what we want to do, and it carries over into old age. And in old age, it's just not realistic anymore."

Like several neighbors, Jackie Marmolejos, 47, chatted with Novak about Jackson's health when she saw Novak riding her bicycle or walking her Maltese mix, Buddy. But the relationship never went further.

There was no reason to pry, either. Novak and Jackson went to Maryland for several months every year, and that's where neighbors said they thought they were when they vanished from sight.

Family members were concerned about Novak and Jackson, but starting in late 2011, their efforts to communicate were rebuffed. They sent flowers, hoping to get delivery confirmation. Jackson's sister sent a registered letter that was signed for, yet no one replied. Relatives found it under the dining-room tablecloth after the deaths.

When Novak and Jackson's phone was disconnected, Newcomb in January 2012 asked the Sheriff's Office to check on them.

"She [Novak] let us know in no uncertain terms that if she needed our help, she would ask for it," Newcomb said.

DeLoach, 56, who has continued to maintain the yard for the women's heirs, said he last saw Novak in August 2012. She cracked the door open and slipped him a check, looking sick or sleepy.

In previous years, mother and daughter invited DeLoach in for a drink of cold water and chatted with him — although they learned a lot more about his life than he did about theirs. At Christmastime, Jackson made him peanut-butter, chocolate and vanilla fudge.

"They were just supernice people," DeLoach said.

Deputies said they think Novak died first. The cause was heart disease, a medical examiner determined. It's unclear whether she lived to see her 62nd birthday that October. Jackson's cause of death was the same.

No one is sure what happened to their dog. Investigators found an empty pet carrier in the garage Feb. 13, the day the bodies were found. A note said, "I can no longer care for Buddy due to my poor health."

"It obviously is a very tragic thing," Newcomb said. "I think most of us would not want to find ourselves fading away that way and nobody knows.

"They were kind, law-abiding, followed all the rules," she added. "And it just didn't work. Something just didn't work."